


Maudlin Smiles

by TunaYuna



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It of Sorts, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-16 03:29:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20180716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TunaYuna/pseuds/TunaYuna
Summary: Kami goes blah, blah, blah, congratulations, rebirth, and Sakura finds herself  as the daughter of Tsunade and Jiraiya after a night of one too many shots of sake.AU where Sakura gets another chance, but she's too pragmatic to let herself dream of fixing it all.





	Maudlin Smiles

She's sick of ambiguous and grand words, so effluous the true meaning becomes lost in metaphors. Yet again, she wishes the voice will be blunt, say what it means in plain prose, not jumbled verse that does more to confuse her than comfort. She gets it, omnipotence always involves eloquent diction and all that rot in movies and books. Save it for a heroine who cares for the poetry.  
  
The voice pauses in it's long winded diatribe, plucking her scathing opinion from her head, and then it falls silent into what she would tentatively label petulant.  
  
It scoffs, "I'm not _pouting_." It spits the word with disgust, its voice twisting it until the word becomes foul and vulgar.  
  
She shrugs. She calls it like she sees it.  
  
"Ugh, you're insufferable," the voice grumbles. If it had a body, she's sure it would be rolling its eyes at her. "Fine, fine, I'll skip all the 'pomp and arse' as you call it.  
  
"Congratulations Haruno Sakura, you won the lottery," the voice has gone dry and sarcastic, and Sakura resists the urge to roll her own eyes. "You're getting reborn, reincarnated, revived, zipzapped into a new body, the whole shebang. I saw your soul and judged it worthy, and now, I deign you with an honorable mission; save the world and blah, blah, blah."  
  
Sakura tunes the voice out and rests her cheek in the palm of her hand, settling herself in for the longhaul. There it went again, another long pontifical tirade that was too close to a homily for her liking.  
  
Finally the voice tapers off into silence when it realizes she's not listening. It doesn't make any noise, but Sakura's pretty sure it's screaming in frustration; it's an all-powerful, supreme being, she's pretty sure it has the power to do that, scream and not make noise or whatever.  
  
"Fuck you." The words are growled, and hey, rude.  
  
Sakura's gearing up for her own rant, but before she's allowed to copy and lecture Mr. Almighty for hours and hours, there's a sound like fingers snapping and her vision goes black.  
  
She would thank Kami for the reprieve, but turns out he's a sardonic smartass. He didn't need the ego boost.

* * *

She's reborn into a different body, the byproduct of Tsunade and Jiraiya actually doing the deed for once after a drunken night of grief and vexation against the world and Kami. Sakura can get behind any outrage aimed towards Kami. He's an asshole and deserves it.  
  
The logistics of time travel, alternate dimensions, and changed timelines are beyond her understanding, and she doesn't need the headache trying to parse it out will give her. It happened. That's the end of that.  
  
She doesn't know how to feel about the white hair and red marks on her cheeks, but at least she knows she'll be taller in this life. For once Naruto and Sasuke won't have the advantage of a longer reach when they spar. Besides the colouring, Sakura takes more after her mother with a pointed chin and honeyed eyes.  
  
Sakura knew Tsunade would be a good mother, and she's not wrong. Though they still wander from village to village, her mother spending more time in the gambling halls than she likes, overall her childhood isn't bad, per se. The lack of stability of housing aside, Tsunade is attentive and protective to the point of overbearing, and her idea of playing with a toddler feels more like Sakura's medical exams than actual playing. They've taken to singing children songs, but the lyrics are replaced with medical terms, and if Sakura isn't who she is, with years and years of intimate knowledge of the human body, she wouldn't be half as successful in shouting out the terms in glee like she does now. She can't bring herself to feel embarrassed by how much fun she's having.  
  
When Tsunade sends a senbon sailing to nail into the anatomical diagram of a naked man, and Sakura calls out the correct tenketsu, Tsunade practically beams with how wide her smile is. The sight makes Sakura a little teary-eyed, and all encompassing love wells up inside of her, threatening to spill over the brim of her eyes. Back in her old life, when Sakura was Sakura, Tsunade smiled little small things, the corner of her lips tilting up and sometimes with teeth, but never to this degree. She was always tinged with melancholy and her smiles painted in maudlin strokes.  
  
There still lingers brief flashes of pain at the corner of her eyes, but they're briefer now. Her smiles feel like home, bright and warm and so full of sunshine delight that Sakura can't help but reciprocate with one of her own.  
  
Shizune watches them play, and shakes her head in fond exasperation at her shishou. Sakura can see a little weight taken off her shoulders as she gazes at them, head tilted and relief and love tugging secret smiles when she thinks neither of them are looking.  
  
At the end of the day when the sun has fallen and the moon brings with it its honeyed nostalgia, and Tsunade is reaching for her bottle of sake she thinks she can hide from Shizune's knowing eyes, Sakura crawls into her mother's lap, carrying with her a well worn copy of theTale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi. She begs, more like demands, to be read to, and Tsunade is distracted enough to forget about her drink. Sakura sits with her head pillowed against Tsunade's breasts and a thumb stuck stubbornly between her teeth, and Shizune is sitting on her bed repacking her supply pack. Tsunade's voice is lilting and before long she's making funny voices for each character, and Sakura giggles with delight. Sakura meets Shizune's gaze across the room and it feels like the other woman knows what she's doing. She winks and it feels conspiratorial.

* * *

Orochimaru sends his goon to befriend and tempt Sakura in the hopes of luring her mother to his side when Sakura seeks companionship. They've concocted a halfass plan to endear themselves to her and maybe stick a life debt to it all as well.  
  
It ends in a spectacular mess because Sakura recognizes when she's being manipulated, and she does not tolerate that shit. Not after another lifetime of her and her boys being yanked by their chains for the good of their village.  
  
So when it's Kabuto who approaches her as a well meaning aniki who's supposedly on a medical mission as a part of his residency with Konoha - as if they believe Konoha will lend itself comforting familiarity even though she's never been to the hidden village before, at least not in this lifetime - and he feigns a fondness for children when he stumbles upon her little play area, Sakura is already pissed.  
  
First off, she's pissed because it's creepy Kabuto, come on. And second, because she's not expecting the snake commanded to bite her until it's already striking out and its fangs are embedded in the crook of her elbow. Before she succumbs to the inevitable, she grabs it by its tail and yanks. Then she feels something _rip_. Venom is working quickly to subdue the thrashing of her limbs and freezes her vocal cords before she can do more than give a single sharp scream. It's painful and burns and it feels like there is liquid fire in her veins, and Sakura, in the part of her mind that's not in flames is cussing out Kabuto and Orochimaru and anyone else who had a hand in this harebrained plan of theirs.  
  
She can feel blood gushing from where the snake has taken a chunk of flesh from her arm, and a sob is caught in her throat. Her body is strung taut and her muscles spasm. She's helpless to move and can only stare wide-eyed at Kabuto standing above her with what looks to be real concern. He glances at the wound and softly swears, and Sakura thinks that wasn't supposed to happen, it was a miscalculation on their part. Kabuto's quick and his hands glow with healing chakra as he hovers them over her body. It barely cools the inferno inside her, and the temperatures are mixing into a kaleidoscope of conflicting sensations until it feels like the coldness of his chakra is stabbing at all of her sensitive bits. She's only had the comforting feel of Shizune's chakra and the honeyed warmth of her mother's in her system, so the foreign intrusion feels alien and violating. She wants to throw him off of her and scrub her skin raw until she can't feel the slick of his chakra against hers anymore. He's siphoning the poison out of her system, but not fast enough, and Sakura can't tell if he's doing that on purpose to prolong her suffering or if he's just that incompetent at this point in time.  
  
It feels like an eternity but can't be more than a handful of seconds until her mother is there, punching Kabuto and sending him careening head over heels until his back hits a tree and breaks through it in a burst of splintered wood to hit another, and another, and another. She leaves Shizune to deal with him and drops to her knees by Sakura's head, petting her hair with trembling fingers, and Sakura realizes. Oh kami, there's a puddle of blood flooding the grass by her side and her mother still has that phobia of hers, and Sakura feels like she might actually die before she's really done anything.  
  
Her mother freezes and Sakura has resigned herself to wait for Shizune, trying to remain conscious to the best of her ability. But then Tsunade moves like the hounds of hell are on her heels.  
  
The feel of her mother's chakra is a welcome balm to her frayed nerves and chakra. It's quick to purge any remaining strands of Kabuto's, and Sakura sags in relief. Her mother will take care of her and everything will be alright. Already one hand is hovering over her open wound and speeding up her body's natural healing process. She can feel the flesh regrowing and knitting back together, and under her mother's loving care, there won't even be a scar. Her other hand is over Sakura's heart, a bubble of warm blue just above her skin. Black goo slowly floats to the surface and exits her pores and eww.  
  
When Tsunade finally finishes and Sakura feels like she's floating on a cloud of cotton, her mother collapses against her. She's sobbing and cradling Sakura against her chest and chanting "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry" into Sakura's hair. And Sakura can't do much but lay there, feeling pride for her mother welling up in her chest. She wants to grip her mother back just as hard as she's gripping her, but Sakura's arms are too weak and heavy for her to lift them.  
  
Sakura can feel Shizune on the edge of her senses, Kabuto a dampened coil of chakra by her side. She ignores them and instead buries her head into her mother's arms. Everything will be okay now.

* * *

When she comes to, Jiraiya's sitting by the side of her bed and petting her hair. He's content to watch her, eyes calm and hands never ceasing their idling strokes.  
  
"You gave us a scare there, kid." His usually booming voice is quiet in the hotel room.  
  
She doesn't know what to say and settles on ducking her head in a show of diffidence. "Sorry," is the best she can do.  
  
Jiraiya shushes her like he might a wild horse. "It wasn't your fault, never your fault," he says and his fingers thread through her locks in a placating motion.  
  
They stay like this for a while. Sakura's content not thinking about Kabuto and Orochimaru and what would become of her mother if she hadn't survived.  
  
Sakura doesn't get to see her father much, he's constantly on the road, traveling across the elemental nation and working to keep his spy network intact. He stops by for a few weeks at a time and brings her trinkets from each new country he visits. Tsunade and him still bicker, and sometimes their arguments become more serious now that she's in the picture.  
  
Sakura knows that a one-night stand doesn't equate a full, healthy romantic relationship, but sometimes she can't help but imagine what her life would be like if there wasn't the Akatsuki, if Jiraiya and Tsunade and Shizune and her lived in a house together in Konoha, and she could see her father everyday of the week and not go months without any word from him. In this scenario Jiraiya is able to proclaim himself Naruto's godfather, and Sakura and Natuto grow up together, and Kakashi isn't alone anymore, and he's not as emotionally constipated as he is, so Sakura and Naruto even get to play with his ninken like they're house pets. Of course Sakura couldn't forget her last boy; Jiraiya would make sure that Sarutobi Hiruzen wasn't a foolish man weakened by sentimentality for his old teammates, and Itachi-san would never have to slaughter his own family and render himself suicidal in his misguided devotion to a village that would see him and his in ruin. Sasuke won't be obsessed with fratricide, and Sakura and Naruto will be there by his side, ready to punch him when he gets stuck in that bullheaded stubbornness of his.  
  
But that's not her life, just a fanciful idyllic dream, and Sakura won't burn herself out clinging to delusions. She can't fault Jiraiya for being absent, just as much as she can't fault Itachi for putting his trust into the erroneous hands of his Hokage. They're all just cogs in a wheel, beheld to the political machinations of old men angry at the world.  
  
Even though she doesn't get to see her father much, because even if she's his daughter, the village still takes precedence - Sakura understands this, but there's still a bitter taste in her mouth - she loves him all the same.

* * *

By the time she awoke, Kabuto has already left the village and headed back to Konoha. Her mother was a little more calm by the time Kabuto spun a tale about how his presence was coincidence and he was trying to heal her, as if that will endear himself to them. Tsunade seems to grudgingly accept this at face value. He's Konoha afterall, and even though he's a shit medic-nin in Sakura's expert opinion, he didn't attack or complain about Tsunade's rough treatment. 

Sakura won't be able to explain how she knows that this is all the machinations of Orochimaru. Yes, the culprit was a snake, but Orochimaru doesn't have dominion of each and every snake in the Land of Fire. But she can do her best to ruin Kabuto at the very least.  
  
Sakura says he's weird and his chakra felt weird, which is true. It was oily and slick and left the taste of snake on her tongue. She hopes that's enough of a hint, but apparently not. He knew the snake was there and didn't stop it, Sakura insists, and at that, her parents finally share a glance.  
  
And if that wasn't enough to convince her parents that Kabuto is bad news, Sakura says he was staring at her weirdly (true) and when he was healing her, he _touched_ her (okay, not that true, but Sakura knows he wanted to. She could see the itch in his eyes to cut her open and dissect all her secrets, to figure out just how she ticks, and what the offspring of the two thirds of the Sannin would be like.)  
  
At this pronouncement, both of her parents snarl.

**Author's Note:**

> I was reading a time travel fict and couldn't get over how in all of these types of ficts, Death or God or Kami all are pompous assholes that speak like they have old English dictionaries shoved up their arses. It just went from there. 
> 
> I have no clue where this plot will lead me, but hopefully somewhere decent. 
> 
> I wrote this on my phone during a flight. Please comment below if you see any typos, god forbid I actually write something without errors.


End file.
